41-Farmer Lee Jones & Dr. Amy Sapola - Why Sustainable Farming Is Important Today!

• How often do you consider the produce you purchase to eat? 
• How often do you consider the quality of the soil it's grown in?
• Have you ever thought about the nutritional value of your choices or do you just assume you're getting adequate nutrition from ANY produce you purchase?  

Today on the podcast I welcome two guests who will enlighten you and challenge any thoughts you may have about the nutritional value of the produce we have available for purchase. 

Farmer Lee Jones and Dr. Amy Sapola of The Chef's Garden in Ohio, discuss regenerative farming, the practices required for sustainable farming, the importance of our growing soils and much more!  You will appreciate what they both have to share, especially their passion for the work they do!

Connect with Farmer Lee Jones and Dr. Amy Sapola:
https://www.chefs-garden.com/

Suggested Resource Links:

• LINK:  Kiss The Ground (documentary)
• LINK:  Believe Big, I Have Cancer, Now What? (video series)
• Culinary Vegetable Institute
• Gardyn, Hydroponic Growing System (the one Ivelisse uses, includes $125 off with this link)

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Transcript

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Ivelisse Page 0:06

Hi, I'm Ivelisse Page and thanks for listening to the Believe Big podcast, the show where we take a deep dive into your healing with health experts, integrative practitioners, biblical faith leaders, and cancer thrivers from around the globe. Welcome to today's episode on the Believe Big podcast. My name is Ivelisse Page and I am so honored to be able to spend this time with you. Earth to table and regenerative farming, that is what we're gonna be discussing today with our friends, Farmer Jones and Dr. Sapola with the Chef's Garden. The Chef's Garden has been delivering quality, flavor, and nutrition direct from their farm to the world's most discriminating chefs for nearly 30 years. They are dedicated to growing vegetables slowly and gently, in full accord with nature. Farmer Lee Jones is committed to rediscovering, saving, and telling the stories of the unique heirloom products that are grown on the farm. He is an in-demand speaker, an expert in sustainable agriculture, and has presented at national and international conferences. Dr. Amy Sapola is the director of Farmacy, F A R M, pharmacy at the Chef's Garden, and also a doctor of pharmacy. One of her primary goals for the farmer is to become part of the health and wellness team, and I could not agree more. Welcome Farmer Jones and Dr. Amy to the show.

Amy Sapola 1:50

Thank you for having us.

Farmer Lee Jones 1:52

We're so excited to be on with you, Ivelisse. This is awesome.

What is your favorite health tip?

Ivelisse Page 1:55

Aw. Can you both share with us one of your favorite health tips? We always start the show with the health tips. So what? What are your favorite?

Amy Sapola 2:02

The first thing that came to mind for me is eat the rainbow. I think that's something that our farm really embraces. We grow 600, 800 different varieties of vegetables or types of vegetables. And so to think of that and the diversity that comes along with it, we know that phytonutrients are flavor. They're the taste and they're the scent. So they're really what makes vegetables taste delicious. Plus phytonutrients give us the health benefits, the antioxidant benefits, the anti-inflammatory benefits. So by having a wide diversity in the colors that you're eating, you're actually getting so many different phytonutrients, which are really beneficial for health.

Ivelisse Page 2:42

I love that, and I can't believe how many vegetables do you grow on the farm?

Amy Sapola 2:46

So 600, 800 different varieties.

Ivelisse Page 2:49

Wow.

Amy Sapola 2:49

Some of those could be microgreens or edible flowers or herbs.

Ivelisse Page 2:53

Wow. Incredible. How about you Farmer Jones?

Farmer Lee Jones 2:55

For 40 years we've been growing for chefs and they told us they wanted the best flavor they could possibly get, and dad really suspected that as we were working towards natural flavor, that we were probably bringing the nutritional levels up. And of course we have a lab on the farm now where we're testing for those from nutrient density, nitrate oxides, and many other things. It's unbelievable the testing they're doing. But one of the things we found is that the salad sensations is a product that's grown in a microgreen stage, which is about an inch and a half to two inches grown in soil, not hydroponically. And it's testing between 150 to 300 times higher than the U S D A average. I'm not a diet guy. I'm a big guy. My brother's a big guy. We like to eat. Take your favorite sandwich and I love to take our salad sensation. We always have a package in the fridge at home and I'll take a nice handful of that, whatever I'm eating, and put a handful of that salad sensation on with my favorite sandwich and get some of those greens into my system. And it really does show up in the numbers and the way you feel with the way I feel personally every single day. So salad sensations on everything.

Amy Sapola 4:03

I think you bring up a really good point. Yeah. That's the microgreens and that's really what makes up the salad sensation is our microgreens. And we know gram for gram microgreens are more nutrient dense than they're full grown counterparts. And so by having those microgreens, like Farmer said, you can incorporate 'em into anything. My kids like 'em on pizza, they like come in tacos. They're really versatile, but they're a nice way to kinda sneak in that extra dose of vitamins and minerals and phytonutrients.

Farmer Lee Jones 4:30

And we see a lot of women that are like trying to get their husbands to eat a little bit healthier. And I tell them, make his favorite sandwich. He won't even notice it. Just get it in his diet.

Ivelisse Page 4:40

It's so true. It's very easy to do. And I can attest, I've received your boxes of produce and they're amazing. Honestly, I can honestly say it's the best tasting, that

What is regenerative farming?

Ivelisse Page 4:50

I've had. I go to local farmers markets, but the nutrient value, like you were saying, with what you grow is incredible, which really had me curious about what you do on your farm and regenerative farming, and we're hearing a lot about it, but for those who are unfamiliar with regenerative farming, can you share with us what that means?

Farmer Lee Jones 5:08

It is so exciting. Ten years ago, any food magazine, any Women's Day magazine, any men's magazine. You didn't hear anything about regenerative agriculture. And it seems like today you cannot get a magazine that doesn't have that in it. And so it's so exciting to see that it's finally reaching mainstream awareness.

LINK: Kiss The Ground (documentary)

Farmer Lee Jones 5:27

If nobody does anything else today, other than watch Kiss The Ground it's a documentary. It really talks about the way that we've been farming with monoculture. And look, the reality is, American farmers are very efficient. They're not bad people. They're following the model that exists, and that is to keep the expenses as low as possible and to produce as many tons per acre. And if it, if they're lucky, they might stay in business and they do it very efficiently. Grasp this concept. We produce food cheaper than any other country in the world, as it relates to our income, we produce food cheaper than any other country in the world, yet we have the highest healthcare in the world. There's a conundrum there, and the reality is that it's cheap food and we're now paying the piper for that. A 3000% increase in kidney, liver, heart, cancer disease, attention deficit disorder, autism, childhood obesity, allergy, diabetes. There's a correlation with the quality and the integrity of the food that we're growing or the lack thereof, and the health or the lack thereof in our country.

Ivelisse Page 6:26

Yes.

Farmer Lee Jones 6:27

And um, it's pretty scary. In the old days, a farmer's goals were always to leave the land in better condition for future generations. It's a great thought. It's something that we still embrace and support and try and do, but I think that regenerative agriculture really is more all encompassing. The single greatest asset on our farm isn't land. It isn't tractors, it isn't greenhouses, it isn't equipment. It's people. And if we can't create a profitable business model so that we can pay team members a competitive work wage, healthcare, sick days, vacation days, all the benefits that are an expected luxury today in America, then the good people are gonna go someplace else. You know, there used to be a saying on the farm, if you can't make it the real world, at least you can go back and work on the farm. And it was pretty condescending. And I think that has to change. It is changing. the perspective of working on a farm is different, but regenerative agriculture takes in the people, the land, the environment, profitability, so much more. When I think of the word sustained, it's like you're hanging onto the chinup bar and you're holding on, but you can feel your fingers slipping and it's all you can do to just hang on. You're sustaining, propping up, doing whatever you can to just hang on. Where regenerative is you're rebuilding and you're rebuilding the people. You're rebuilding the land, you're supporting the environment. You're doing all of those things that you can possibly think of and integrate in to regenerate and to build, not just to hang on, but to grow for the future. And so I think that, in my mind, that's really the difference between sustainability agriculture and regenerative agriculture.

Ivelisse Page 7:57

I love that.

What are some of the practices used in regenerative farming?

Ivelisse Page 7:58

And what are some of those practices that are incorporated into regenerative farming for those who are unfamiliar?

Amy Sapola 8:04

Yeah. For us, I think our big focus is the soil, right? Because we know soil health is at the absolute key, and J.I. Rodale said essentially, healthy soil equals healthy plants, equals healthy people. And you can take it further and say, a healthy planet, right? And so, 98% of the calories we consume comes from the soil. And the other 2% we should probably question what that is, right?

Ivelisse Page 8:28

Yes.

Amy Sapola 8:28

If it doesn't, so when it comes to regenerative agriculture, it's really about focusing in on soil health. And so that's using cover crops, crop rotation, minimizing tillage, using a lot of diversity as we talked about earlier in what we're planting, and really focusing back on how do we keep that biodiversity in the soil so that we can grow the healthiest plants possible.

Ivelisse Page 8:52

Yeah, I think that's so important. And I read this and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard that the organic produce that was grown in the fifties, compared to today's organic produce has 50% less nutrients than in the fifties because of the soil health and what hasn't been done. Which brings me to my next question.

How is organic farming different than regenerative farming?

Ivelisse Page 9:14

How is organic farming different than regenerative farming?

Amy Sapola 9:17

I think that and Lee, for real, you can jump in on this as well, I think both are very important and both have their own pros and cons. But I think as far as organic goes, it's telling you they're not using synthetic inputs. They can still use more natural ones. It doesn't necessarily tell you about what's going on with the soil or the farming practices per se. Also, organic means they're not using GMO seeds, which can also be very important. So regenerative though really applies a lot of the same practices, right? So we're really trying to minimize any sort of synthetic inputs as well, but we're having more of a focus on the soil, I would say. Farmer, what are your thoughts on that?

Farmer Lee Jones 9:56

Yeah, no, I would agree with that. We don't call ourselves organic. A lot of times we go beyond organic. We don't want to be limited or directed by rules or laws from the organic certification. There's a lot of politics involved and we choose not to be involved in that. I know that the organic group, the hardcore guys, Elliot Coleman, totally disagrees with the rules of organic today. We don't really wanna get wrapped up in that. We believe that hardcore, organic people are trying to do the right things just like we are. And it fundamentally comes back to the health of the soil. When we jokingly talk about going out to harvest vitamin D from the sunshine, people, I think don't understand that there's so much more truth to that than really exists. What we're doing on the farm is doing lab analysis on the soil, finding out what those deficiencies are. What's really cool is that different types of plants will harvest different types of energy from the sun. It's our personal belief, and I don't wanna speak for Dr. Amy, that God designed a system far superior to anything that we can fake out chemically or synthetically. We've really mucked it up in the last a hundred years and when we lost the family farm in the early eighties and started over, and we looked at why did the nutritional levels in the last a hundred years go down 50 to 80% with all the knowledge, with all the technology, with all the know-how that we have in this world, did our nutritional levels go down? So we started looking back at agricultural books from a hundred years ago and really, trying to work in harmony with nature rather than trying to outsmart it. So based on those deficiencies in the soil, we may plant clover, alfalfa, barley, buckwheat, rye, fetch, sedan grass. We have a 15 species planting. We're seeing numbers that are just blowing off the charts. Now, the USDA average is too low today, but we're seeing a lot of numbers that are 150 to 300 times higher than the USDA average. So it's exciting. Do we have it all figured out? No. For some reason, we haven't been able to figure out the selenium issue. So we don't have this all figured out. My dad, used to have a saying that we have to continue to make mistakes at a faster rate than the competition. And he also said we do mistakes well. But it's really exciting to see that when we work in harmony with nature, harvest that sun's energy where even now there's 50% of the acreage is committed to harvesting the sun's energy. Then the next year we'll plant into there for the food we want consume. But even in between the rows of tomatoes, and I saw it on kales and broccolis and brussel sprouts this year, even between the rows we're planting cover crops, which are harvesting energy goes down through the roots. Then the Brussels sprouts or those plants that we want to consume can pick that back up. It's so beautiful to see that symbiotic relationship working together. It just gives me... oh, the hair is standing on my arms. It's so exciting to see how we can work in harmony with nature. It really works.

Amy Sapola 12:33

I think that's so true. And part of what's going on with the, inability of plants to take up the minerals that are in the soil, and that's why we're seeing that deficiency is the lack or the death of the microbiome in the soil. And so by our current farming practices, the minerals are there in the soil. However, the microorganisms that make them available to the plants that work symbiotically with the plants, they aren't. And they're disrupted and not working at their full potential. And Monocropping doesn't help that. Nor does using spray. So like glyphosate binds up minerals in the soil, making them less available to the plant. So I think it's partially our practices, but it's not that necessarily, the minerals aren't there. It's really they aren't available to the plants, and so that's why it's so important to build the biology of the soil.

Ivelisse Page 13:24

I love that

Farmer Lee Jones 13:25

Biology is not there to break that food down into a form that the plant can pick it up.

Ivelisse Page 13:30

Well, you're definitely doing what you're meant to do, Farmer Jones. I love the excitement, in your voice. You definitely have a great purpose in really making food fun and interesting and really nutritious for those of us who are consuming it. And you shared something about the labels, U S D A, organic and all those things. And I completely agree. I go to farmer's markets and when I speak to the local farmers, they may not say they're organic because you have to have a certain certification and you have to pay for that and all of this. but they said, I don't use these sprays. You can tell also when you're looking at their produce, the difference, besides just going to the grocery store and buying something.

What should consumers ask their local famers to know they are getting quality produce?

Ivelisse Page 14:09

So what are some tips or what are some things that you could recommend to individuals who are going locally, to say a farmer's market and they're not sure what to ask the local farmers as far as how to make sure they're getting the great quality produce that you're producing at your farm?

Farmer Lee Jones 14:26

I'll jump in there. I would never want to say anything that would be negative towards these other small family farms. I think that having conversations with them about their practices, and I think that the people that are trying to do it the right way are passionate as well about the way that they're farming and the results that they're seeing. Are they using cover crops? What practices are they doing? The RoundUp issues and the chemical issues, those companies told farmers for years that when it hit the earth's surface, that it dissapated, and it ties back to what Amy was just talking about, that biology, the levels of biology just are non-existent when you're using monoculture practices. Proof is in the pudding. I'm sure that you're in Colorado, but we've all read about the Great Lakes issues and the wonderful crops of algal bloom that were growing in the lakes causing a lot of problems because those foods, those fertilizers, those synthetic fertilizers can't be broken down into a form that the plant can pick it up. Consequently, the nutritional level's going down, but then it's running off into the creeks, the tributaries, the rivers, and then into the lakes, and we have all this algal bloom problem. So it's very evident to see the results of what's going on. But I think, one, making sure that you are talking to a farmer. There are situations in farm markets where people are buying and reselling to try and build a profit. But I would say that if you're going to true farmer's markets, these people are proud. They're picking and harvesting the products themselves. I don't think that anybody that's trying to do the right things are gonna be defensive. They're gonna embrace. I love it when people come to our farm. We opened a farm market in the middle of Covid to be able to make our product available to our community, and pivoted to a nationwide home delivery. We were selling only to restaurants and, they were dead in the water. So we opened a home delivery so folks could get the product. People are more savvy, they're more interested, they're more tuned in and aware of where the food's coming from, who's growing it, how they're growing it, how those people on those farms are being taken care of. That's really critical. And I think that, if you go to a farmer's market and you engage in a conversation and they embrace that conversation, you know that you're talking to somebody that really cares. And that's what we need.

Amy Sapola 16:31

I think that's great advice and it's just building that community of like-minded people and finding people who are really passionate about what they do and who are caring for the land. And one of the things we talk about is we're farming not only for people today, but for future generations. And I think that's really important to consider.

Ivelisse Page 16:48

That's great. And you mentioned something earlier in the show, and I'm just curious because I have a small little hydroponic garden indoors for the wintertime. Jimmy and I grow some microgreens and we do some lettuces and things like that and herbs that I like to throw into my

Hydroponic vs. Regenerative Farming

Ivelisse Page 17:05

recipes. And so hydroponic, what is the nutrient value difference between that versus what you do in regenerative farming? Because I would need to pivot maybe if it doesn't have the nutrient value that I think it does.

Amy Sapola 17:17

That's a great question. We haven't studied that extensively itself. We haven't compared. One thing I will say is that being in the soil, I think there is some benefit to that. When you're growing hydroponically, everything's coming from the water, all of the nutrients, you don't necessarily have the biology. But I don't know of any actual studies looking at them head-to-head for nutrient value.

Ivelisse Page 17:38

Farmer Jones, any thoughts on that?

Farmer Lee Jones 17:40

I think that early on, even before you were here, that they did some, because we were really looking at that.

Amy Sapola 17:44

Good.

Farmer Lee Jones 17:45

You know what, here's what we should do, is let's send you five pounds of our soil and you can do your own experiment.

Ivelisse Page 17:53

I'd love that.

Farmer Lee Jones 17:53

And I think we were even making some of that available online. Did we or was that just in the spring?

Amy Sapola 18:00

Jamie's researching it right now. Looking at doing kind of a home grow kit.

Ivelisse Page 18:04

Okay. I would love that. Just to see the differences. I can do a blog on it too, just so

Farmer Lee Jones 18:08

That'd be fun.

Ivelisse Page 18:09

You can see side by I'd be fun. Experiment.

Amy Sapola 18:11

Yeah.

Ivelisse Page 18:11

But ,yeah.

Farmer Lee Jones 18:12

From a bigger scale, E. coli has been that thing that's really been scary. Of course animal manures can cause issues with E. coli And so there's been a concern with that, and that's where we've had some differences of opinion with organic versus inorganic, because the water is a great carrier of E. coli and when you're doing it on a bigger scale, let's just say hypothetically that grandma has been not well for several months. She's finally feeling better. You've planned for several years a trip to Disney, and you go to Disney and E. coli maybe it's been around since the beginning of time and we've had the immune system to defend against it. Her system is compromised and now you get a little bit of E. Coli that doesn't bother the healthy body or yours and mine if we're healthy, but somebody's body that's compromised all of a sudden that E. coli can really be an effect. So to be able to guarantee a healthy product that E. coli is really an issue for us. So, I mean, it all kind of weaves together. It used to be on the farm that everybody had a cistern. You collected the runoff from the roofs, and it went into a cistern and you drank that water. It's full of E. Coli. but we seem to be healthy enough to defend against it. Now we chlorinate the water. Why do we do that? To kill the E. coli. We're the most sterile environment in the world, and we're the most vulnerable environment in the world.

Ivelisse Page 19:26

Yes.

Farmer Lee Jones 19:26

You never hear an E. coli outbreak in Mexico. But we can't go down there and drink the water. So it all weaves together nutrition and food safety and E. coli and any one of these could be a whole topic of conversation for an hour.

Ivelisse Page 19:39

Yeah, we'll have to have you back on to talk about

How can the farmer become part of the health and wellness team?

Ivelisse Page 19:41

that. Dr. Amy, you share that one of your primary goals is for the farmer to become part of the health and wellness team. How do you see that happening?

Amy Sapola 19:49

Yeah, I think it's really about building connection and community and working together, collaboratively within the healthcare system. But also within the farming system, right? Like the agricultural system and the healthcare system have a lot of the same problems, but we also have a lot of strengths and we ultimately have the goal of helping to improve health. And so I think bringing together these passionate regenerative farmers or organic farmers, people who are doing this work along with healthcare providers who are looking to provide more than a prescription. And so people who understand that food can be medicine. And so how do we bring these groups together to really provide that food, the quality that they're looking for? Farmer Lee always says like A carrot is not a carrot is not a carrot. And so how do you provide that really high quality to the healthcare teams to help support patients? And so I think, food as medicine is foundational to human health. Soil is human health. But also looking at how do we get to a point where like our HSA dollars, maybe those could be spent on vegetables. I think advocating for those sorts of changes where fundamentally we change our spending habits and for the healthcare system to actually recognize the importance of food by changing what they're serving in hospitals. I think anyone who stayed in a hospital for a night or more has experienced hospital food, and to me that fundamentally shows that at this point we don't necessarily see that connection between health and the healing potential of food, in the healthcare system. And so that's what we really hope to change. I think, I say this and a lot of others do too. No amount of supplements or medications will make up for a poor diet, and that's fundamentally what I believe. My undergraduate's in nutrition and I went into pharmacy knowing that food is foundational to health, and I hoped that as a pharmacist I would be able to help people come off of chronic medications where possible by using food as medicine in a healing sense.

Ivelisse Page 21:56

Yeah, I love that. And I think that's where we can also work together, with you all at the Chef's

LINK: Believe Big: I Have Cancer, Now What? (video series)

Ivelisse Page 22:01

Garden. We just released a video series, I Have Cancer, Now What? And in the series there's a video section on how to build your support team. And one of the things that I mentioned in there is having people that can help you when you're going through a cancering process. Sometimes people don't know what to do and how they can help. One way that we mention is buying organic and great quality produce that can be delivered to the patient's home that they can make juices with or their meals with. And, I'm gonna definitely put a link to to the Chef's Garden in this podcast, but I'm gonna also add it to that video series because that is just such a great gift that someone can give to a patient going through cancer to have really great quality produce. So I love that you are working towards building this bridge between individuals who are wanting to get well and those who are providing that for individuals.

Amy Sapola 22:56

Thank you so much and I think we feel so honored to be able to be in that capacity to serve in that capacity. For me, this is a dream come true. I worked in specialty pharmacy and talked with patients who were just newly diagnosed with cancer about oral chemotherapy, and there are so many questions around what do I eat? What's okay, what's not okay? I just found out it, it's a wave of emotion. And so I think to have food available, food is something that connects all of us. I think it meets our basic human needs, right? But so much more. There's so many emotional connections from food as well. I think nourishment comes on a lot of levels. So to be able to be there for people in these times is really just important to us.

Ivelisse Page 23:41

Yeah. We appreciate all that you both do because like you said, food is

What is the Culinary Vegetable Institute?

Ivelisse Page 23:45

medicine. And another aspect to the Chef's Garden and your farm is that you have a culinary vegetable institute. What is that? Can you share with us, what that is?

Farmer Lee Jones 23:55

It certainly has evolved over time. We always felt like the relationship between the chef and the farmer, if the chef was equal to one and the farmer was equal to one, that combined synergy was the power of 10. And so we have normally about 600 visiting chefs a year, and it's a space where chefs could go into the fields, harvest product, come back, work in the kitchen with Chef Jamie and the culinary team at the Culinary Vegetable Institute. But it's really evolved over time into a place and a facility where we have meetings and coming together of minds of doctors that are looking for information and ideas and wanting to know what we're working on, and us talking to them about how we can, as Dr. Amy talked about bridging that gap, And of course Jamie is constantly working on developing products that really, I think, meet the needs of the consumer today. And I really believe ultimately our end run is health and wellness and that's where we're gonna be able to do the most good for society. I think sometimes there's an association with eating healthy and it being bland or being not fun, or not exciting and regimented like a diet. But it can also be good and good for you and exciting. And I think that's really where their world is evolving towards. What it started out as and where it is today are so drastically different. But we still have visiting chefs and we love having our chefs. We, in the middle of Covid converted to an Airbnb. We have folks that are really wanting to know more about this connection and they can come and stay. Jamie prepares amazing meals that are like 95% done and they get to finish them off and cook them. They can add on farm tours or a honeybee experience.

Ivelisse Page 25:38

That's incredible.

Farmer Lee Jones 25:39

We've evolved and you have to continue to change with the times or the times leave you behind. I've never been more excited about agriculture than I am today, and all that's going to come in the future. I visualize the doctors are gonna be prescribing fresh vegetables instead of chemical drugs, and it's exciting, it's happening. Vegetable conferences that we've gone to for years are now nearly 50% filled with doctors.

Ivelisse Page 26:03

Wow.

Farmer Lee Jones 26:04

When they went through school, it was all Western culture because it was driven by the pharmaceutical companies and there was very little time spent on this part of it. And I think that it's really exciting to see them circling back and saying, wait a minute, what was before Western culture, food. I can remember my grandfather pulling bark from a tree and creating a concoction for me for a sore throat. It wasn't penicillin, it wasn't amoxycillin. Now we're overloaded with it that they're not even prescribing it anymore.

Amy Sapola 26:31

One of the things I love about having Chef Jamie on staff too, and bringing together like the farmer, the chef, the healthcare fields. We're able to design products or come up with products that really serve multiple needs. And so we did a collaboration between ourselves, the Chef's Garden, and Wake Robin, and we did this fermentation collaboration. So we're coming out with sauerkraut and fermented hot sauce and pickles that are naturally fermented. And so being able to help drive the creation of products that taste amazing, but also are really beneficial for health has been so fun. As someone newer to this area, or newer to this organization, it's a dream come true to be honest, to be able to work with Chef Jamie and come up with these products. We've been working on developing teas. We did a root vegetable tea that, it actually helps with digestive health. So it has inulin in there, which is really good to feed bacteria. So it's a prebiotic fiber that helps feed the gut microbiome. And even the tea after it's brewed, you can use the spent tea and put it in risotto or make it into crackers with some almond flour. So the whole entire tea is useful and nothing goes to waste, which is really fun.

Ivelisse Page 27:44

Wow, that's incredible. I can't wait to try it.

Final comments on regenerative farming

Amy Sapola 27:48

Yeah.

Ivelisse Page 27:48

I can't believe that our time has already come to an end, but before we sign off, is there anything that you would love to add about regenerative farming that I haven't asked you yet?

Farmer Lee Jones 27:59

Again, I would go back to watch Kiss the Ground. I think that it talks about us having 60 harvests left. I think that there's some fear mongering in that yet, I think that there's a lot of truth to it. It's a concern when you see the number of occurrences in health issues and the nutritional level's going the wrong way, the erosion. We have to take a hold of this and it's not the farmer's problem and it's not the doctor's problem. It's all of our opportunity to be able to do better. And how do we fix this? We do it a bite at a time. And we're grateful to be on today and talk over a wide variety of things, and we just appreciate the work that you're doing and all the good that you're doing for so many people. And we're just truly honored to be on the show with you today. And we look forward to a visit from you.

Ivelisse Page 28:44

Yeah, I'll be there. I'm looking forward, to that V R B O

Amy Sapola 28:48

And I would say just real quick, the one takeaway I would leave people with, is that the concept of whole food bioactivity or like the innate wisdom of the whole? And we know that phytonutrients, when they're consumed in a supplement, like by themselves, do not have nearly the same effect as when you're able to eat whole foods. And so really coming back to a whole foods based diet, grown in healthy soil, and getting to know your farmer and building that community.

Ivelisse Page 29:18

Yeah. It just relates even in the sense of our bodies and taking care of it, that we have to look at it as a whole. and not just one aspect of it. The physical, the emotional, the spiritual side, it all plays into our health and we can't just focus on one aspect and think that we're gonna be healthy. So the same with what you're saying with eating the rainbow, it's to really have a good nutrient dense, healthy diet, you need to eat variety and the colorful vegetables that are out there. So thank you for that takeaway, really appreciate it. And thank you again both for being on the show and we'll look forward to seeing you again soon.

Amy Sapola 29:54

Thank you.

Farmer Lee Jones 29:55

Thank you. Eat your veggies.

Ivelisse Page 30:04

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